RFC: wrong highlights on 'docked' tabs

[Matthew Woehlke]

Because newui draws vertical tabs by drawing horizontal tabs and then 
rotating them, the highlights on the tabs are incorrect. I understand 
why this is done for the text, but is it not possible to draw a vertical 
button? I suppose things would go horribly wrong if the button were 
drawn normally but in a vertical orientation, and only the text was 
drawn rotated?

The reason I am asking is because I am investigating adding 'hinting' to 
newui's drawing code (Button::drawButton) that would enable a style that 
knows about KDevelop's newui to alter its drawing to draw something more 
tab-like rather than button-like (without interfering with other styles 
that lack this 'special support'). But... I want to do it in a way such 
that other applications with similar 'tab docks' could use the same 
hinting. I am wondering if it is better to somehow clean this up so that 
newui is doing less 'rotated drawing', or if the style should assume 
that vertical tabs are drawn via rotation (in which case the style 
should draw its highlighting "wrong").

Opinions?

(And I suppose I might as well ask the all-important question: what are 
my chances of getting such hinting into KDevelop proper?)

-- 
Matthew
$ kill bill
kill: can't find process "bill"